


To Laugh in the Face of Death

by W0rdW1zard



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adult Harry Potter, Adulthood, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Brother Feels, Canon Compliant, Family Feels, Feelings, Feels, Fix-It, Love, Memories, Reminiscing, Resurrection Stone, Reunions, Sad, The Deathly Hallows, Twenty Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 11:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15072005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/W0rdW1zard/pseuds/W0rdW1zard
Summary: Twenty years after the death of his twin Fred, George Weasley ruminates on the past with longtime family friend Harry Potter.





	To Laugh in the Face of Death

**Author's Note:**

> 1) CW: Thoughts of suicide, never acted upon.  
> 2) Like this story? Comment or kudo! Tell your friends. Trying to make a living after writing and as BS as "exposure" is as a tactic to worm out of paying for your friend's art...it is in fact necessary.

To Laugh in the Face of Death

Every May 2nd for twenty years, a man with one ear would walk the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry under the pretense of talking to a poltergeist.  
“I think Peeves has some good ideas,” he would say when students inevitably asked. “A little extreme maybe, seeing as he doesn’t have to worry about dying, but if anyone living or dead can joke better than we can, then it would be that see through idiot.”  
He would say ‘we’ to be ambiguous. Most people thought he meant his little brother who ran the joke shop with him. Headmistress Minerva McGonagall knew better. George Weasley meant his lost twin.  
On May 2nd, Professor McGonagall would always order the astronomy tower completely empty so that George could go sit on his own and stare out across the castle grounds like he had with his brother the last time they spoke.  
Every time she watched him ascend the stairs, her heart melted with sadness as she remembered the vibrant tricksters he and his brother had been and how it hurt to compare that to what he had become.  
“You okay, Freddie?” he remembered asking leaning over the railing, watching as the teachers and aurors battled with the death eaters down below.  
“Yeah,” Fred replied.  
“Me too.”  
And he had meant it, but that was the last time he was truly ever okay. On May 2nd 2018, George sat in the astronomy tower for the twentieth time.  
“Twenty years, Fred,” George now newly thirty nine whispered into the night. “You’ve been gone longer than you were here, you lucky git.”  
Sometimes, he couldn’t help but fancy jumping while he was here. He never would of course, because he knew that when Molly Weasley followed him to the grave there wouldn’t be anything that could save him from her wrath. And besides he couldn’t leave little Fred or Roxanne or Angelina behind. But given veritaserum, he would have to admit he fancied it. While life was a vibrant Weasley red while Fred was alive, it had been gray for twenty years and no matter how many laughs he gave the world, he always felt that when he laughed himself that he was lying. If only a little.  
A warm wind shook him and then, so as to wrench himself from his troubled thoughts, George took a firework from the briefcase he always brought to Hogwarts and threw it up into the air. It exploded into a gigantic scarlet ‘F.’ The sound reverberated off of the walls and he could have sworn he heard a scream come from the Gryffindor common room.  
“F is just the best letter to have hanging in the sky,” Fred said once. “If you don’t mind my saying so, George. G is just as good as any other letter, but F gives people cause to believe we’re being lewd.”  
“Who’s to say we aren’t, Fred?” he had replied. “I wouldn’t mind adding three other letters to the mix.”  
George’s face curved into the tiniest of grins.  
“George?” said a voice from behind him, causing him to nearly lose his footing. His heart began racing so fast that he was sure he was going to have a heart attack and he gave an involuntary yelp.  
“Easy,” the voice said. “It’s just me.”  
George turned to see Harry Potter bedecked in his ministry suit and tie, hands up in the air.  
“Merlin’s Beard, Potter, scare me off the tower why don’t you?”  
“What are you doing here?” Harry asked, blinking.  
“May 2nd, Harry,” George responded darkly, hoping that would be enough. It was. Harry’s face whitened and his green eyes shot to his shoes.  
“Oh yeah, right. Sorry.”  
George waved the hanging silence away. “What are you doing here?”  
Harry shrugged. “Professor Binns thought I should give an account of my last duel with Riddle considering it’s been twenty years today. Albus was mortified when I taught his class.”  
George gave a soft chuckle and shook his head. “Can’t believe it’s been twenty years. Doesn’t seem like it.”  
“And yet look at all that’s happened since then. How are Angelina and Roxanne by the way? It’s been since Christmas since I’ve seen Angelina.”  
“They’re both fine. Roxanne takes after her aunt Ginny and both her parents with the way she flies.” George replied with a shrug. “Fred is almost done with his first year. Hear he’s been getting into plenty of trouble.”  
“Like father like son,” Harry said with a grin.  
“Like uncle like nephew,” George said before he could stop himself.  
There was a moment of silence where they both avoided each other’s gaze. George sighed. “Sorry about that.”  
“Don’t be, mate,” Harry said, trying to sound casual. “We lost a lot of people that night. Tonks, Remus, Snape, Fred…The Order is having a get together to remember them on Saturday.”  
“Killed a lot of Death Eaters too though,” George said, trying to remain positive. “Can you imagine the world with Bellatrix Lestrange still running around in it? Or Voldemort?” He always felt bold saying Voldemort’s name, even twenty years after his death. Felt as though he were being brave. He owed it to Fred who had never known a world without You-Know-Who. “The Wizarding world is free. So I guess it’s worth it.”  
“Maybe,” Harry said. There was more silence. George watched Harry shift for a moment, scratch his head, fiddle with his glasses and then he recalled something that his sister in law said.  
“He does that when he has something he wants to say.” Hermione had reassured Ginny once during Christmas, when an argument had broken out between the Potters. George had been there in the Burrow’s kitchen watching as Harry fidgeted in the living room, and he couldn’t rightly remember what it was that Harry wanted to say or even what the argument was about but Hermione as always had been right. Harry apologized five minutes later.  
You didn’t have to be an accomplished legilimens to see that Harry Potter wanted to say something now as well. Something was weighing heavily on him.  
“Harry?” George asked finally.  
Harry looked up, scratching his head. “George, I have to show you something.” 

Half an hour later, Harry and George were tiptoeing through the forbidden forest.  
“Harry, could you tell me what is going on?”  
“Lumos,” Harry whispered and pointed his illuminated wand toward the ground. He continued on through the forest, without a word.  
“Harry, seriously, I’m no Ron, but there are gigantic spiders in this forest and God only knows what else. We better be here for a good reason.”  
Something to George’s left rattled ominously and his stuck his wand out toward the source of the noise. There was nothing there, nothing visible anyway, so slowly, he lowered his wand.  
“Where the bloody hell is it?” Harry whispered to himself, one foot in front of the other, stepping on sticks and branches fallen from the towering trees around them.  
“Where the bloody hell is what?” George demanded. “Look, I have to open the shop tomorrow morning at eleven and I can’t exactly do that if I’m dead.”  
“Shush,” Harry hissed.  
George threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “Could you maybe just tell me? Use Accio if you really have to be this dramatic.”  
“I can’t summon it,” Harry said. “I think we’re almost there.”  
Now George’s mind was really reeling. When a summoning charm was useless on an object, it was usually because the object was particularly powerful. Or maybe it was a living creature…  
They came to the edge of a clearing in the middle of the forbidden forest where old ropes were tied to the branches of a tree. A fire pit sat in the middle of it, a dancing, eerie green flame flickered in the pit, conjured by magic, likely to never go out.  
George had heard about this place, but had never actually gone looking for it. “Riddle’s Last Haunt” they called it. The place where Lord Voldemort last made camp before Harry had brought about his end. The place was a glorified tourist attraction for those who were brave enough to venture into the forest. Legend had it that if you went to Riddle’s Last Haunt on nights when the moon didn’t shine, the ghost of Voldemort would appear and offer you his powers if you were “pureblood” or kill you if you were muggleborn.  
Tonight, surprisingly, nobody but Harry and George stood there.  
Harry looked around the clearing and breathed in deeply, closing his eyes. George had heard the story countless times since the battle. Voldemort had used the killing curse on Harry here twenty years ago. Harry had survived, and yet again Voldemort had awakened the sacrifice magic that ended his reign a second and final time. Harry was clearly remembering that moment.  
Was it painful for him the same way it was painful for George to remember when Percy found him, face contorted into otherworldly grief? Was it like how George felt when his until recently estranged older brother choked out those six terrifying words?  
“George, he’s in the Great Hall.”  
It couldn’t be like that. Could it?  
“Is this what you wanted to show me?” asked George. “Riddle’s Last Haunt?”  
Harry opened his eyes and looked at George solemnly, shaking his head. “No, but this is where I left it.”  
“Left what?”  
George watched as Harry got to his knees at the head of the clearing and began to sift through the dirt with his bare hands. George got to his knees and began digging as well, not knowing what for.  
They dug like that until their hands were raw, but to no avail. George’s fingers were covered in mud, his nails in blood. Angelina was going to be concerned when he apparated home, that much he knew, but whatever Harry was looking for had to be important.  
“I want you to promise me something,” Harry said as he dug.  
“What is it, Harry?” George asked.  
“Don’t tell anyone about this.”  
George felt his spine tingle. “Merlin’s beard, Harry, what are we digging up? A dead person?”  
Harry gave a half smile. “You could say that.”  
George stood up and backed away from Harry. “Bloody Hell.”  
He stood there awkwardly, watching Harry in gut wrenching anticipation until...  
“Here it is,” Harry said, delighted, picking up what was not a dead person at all, but instead appeared to be a black glossy pebble trampled into the ground by centaur hoof. Upon closer examination, it appeared that the pebble was diamond shaped.  
“What is that?” George asked.  
Harry looked sternly at him. “You know how Voldemort was going on about how he got the Elder Wand?”  
“Yeah but he was just a loony right?”  
Harry’s face remained serious, spooky even. The light of the moon reflected in his circular glasses. He didn't nod or shake his head, he just knelt there.  
“After the war,” Harry said, breaking the silence, “Ron, Hermione and I did our best to cover up the Hallows. We worried that someone like Voldemort or Grindelwald would come after them. That some power hungry idiot would try to be Master of Death.We talked with Kingsley and with the Daily Prophet and dispelled any rumors that the Hallows were real.”  
“What are you saying, Harry?” George asked, his heart thudding thunderously.  
“George, they’re real. Dumbledore had them.” He looked over his shoulder cautiously then back at George. “You have to promise you won’t tell a soul. Not Angelina, not your mum or dad. Not Ginny. Not Ron or Hermione. Bloody Hell, especially not Hermione. She’ll kill me if she knew I told you.” He began to reach out, to hand George the stone.  
“I promise, Harry.”  
“And you have to promise you won’t use it that often. You’ve heard the stories, so you know why you really shouldn’t use it. Maybe once a year or something like that. You need it more than anyone, but I’m trusting you, don’t bring him back for too long or he’ll be miserable.”  
George’s heart began to pound as he nodded. “Only tonight and on April First. That’s our birthday.”  
“Promise?”  
“Promise,” George replied. He could hardly talk. He felt his fingers and arms lock up. His hands shook as he reached out to grab the rhombus shaped stone.  
When he grabbed it, he immediately noticed how smooth, and sleek it was. How even after two decades of being left in the mud, it felt as if it had been recently polished. “Thank you, Harry,” George said.  
Harry nodded and took a step back. George took a deep breath and turned the Resurrection Stone over in his hand.  
It was like looking into a mirror, if a mirror made you look twenty years younger and as if you had both ears.  
“Gred?” George said, his voice quavering.  
The reflection stared back at him with the ghost of a grin “Hello, Forge. Been dying to see you.”  
“Rubbish,” George said, laughing a laugh thick with tears. “A whole world of death related humor and you go with dying to see you.”  
And then, for the first time in twenty years the Weasley twins shared a laugh.


End file.
